


A Semi-Normal Life

by MaryPSue



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Transcendence, Gen, background Mabel/Henry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-25
Updated: 2015-02-25
Packaged: 2018-03-15 01:24:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3432881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryPSue/pseuds/MaryPSue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the years since his first summer in Gravity Falls, Dipper Pines has seen (and been chased by, and nearly eaten by) a lot of strange things. Seriously. A <i>lot</i> of strange things. He's something of an expert on all things supernatural, if he does say so himself (which he does).</p><p>Somehow, though, none of it has managed to prepare him for coming face-to-fanged-face with a demon who claims to be <i>him</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Semi-Normal Life

**Author's Note:**

> Another oneshot for the [Transcendence AU](http://transcendence-au.tumblr.com) that somehow never made it onto AO3.

There weren’t any flashing lights, or long, winding vortex-tunnels, or alien-spaceship noises like a siren slowed down to the speed of whalesong. There was just a sudden feeling that the world had turned inside out and then righted itself again, and a young man stepped out of thin air and fell flat on his face on the floor of the Stanley Pines Memorial Library.

No one moved for a moment, watching him carefully to see if he’d do anything interesting.

At last, Henry ventured over and tentatively nudged the newcomer in the side with his toe. A long, drawn-out groan emanated from the prone figure on the floor, and Henry jumped backwards out of the way as the stranger rolled onto his side and pushed himself up on one elbow, looking around with a squint of general suspicion. There was something familiar about him, but Henry couldn’t quite place it; he was fairly sure he’d never met the man before, but he was equally sure he’d seen him somewhere.

“Are you all right?” he managed to ask, at length, while the stranger scanned his surroundings, his look of suspicion deepening into honest confusion.

“Is this the _Mystery Shack_?” the stranger asked, taking off the trucker’s hat with the pine tree motif and shaking out his unruly brown hair before pulling the hat back on, adjusting it carefully. Henry noticed that, nestled in amongst the linework of odd creatures and curious lettering that tattooed his forearms, the stranger had a perfect summoning circle inked into the inside of his left wrist.

“Nobody’s called it that for almost a decade,” Henry answered, warily. The strange sense that he _knew_ this man was only growing stronger, and he glanced over at Mabel, hoping for some support.

He didn’t expect to see Mabel staring, slack-jawed, at the stranger on the floor, for the first time since Henry had proposed to her at a loss for words.

The stranger followed Henry’s gaze, and broke into a broad grin at the sight of Mabel behind the counter. “Mabel! Wait, no, you must be _this_ timeline’s Mabel.” He struggled to his feet, hindered somewhat by the heavy backpack strapped to his back, and crossed the room with two long strides. “Oh yeah! Turns out that there’s a way to step between timelines -”

Mabel made a strangled sound.

“Do you _know_ this guy?” Henry asked, and both Mabel and the stranger turned to face him in perfect unison. It was downright creepy, and Henry would have taken a little more time to be creeped out if that thoughtless movement hadn’t been exactly the spark Henry needed to realise why the stranger was so familiar. There were some differences, of course, but he looked eerily similar to Mabel. Which meant –

“ _Dipper_?” Henry asked, and the stranger frowned.

“Yeah? Do I know you? Uh, in this timeline, I mean, obviously _I_ don’t know you, but…”

Mabel made another strangled squeaking noise, and then another, and it took Henry a moment to realise she was trying not to laugh. Of course, this was Mabel, so she didn’t have much luck. Within minutes, she was doubled over, holding her sides, letting out huge, almost hysterical guffaws. Both the strange Dipper and Henry realized at about the same moment that whatever she was laughing about, it wasn’t funny.

“Mabel? Are you okay?”

“Did I say something wrong? Oh god. I’m not dead in this timeline, am I?”

Mabel stopped, for a second, looking directly at the strange Dipper with wide eyes. For a moment, Henry thought that she was going to lunge across the counter at him. Thankfully, she only opened her mouth and bellowed the loudest, deepest, most unamused laugh of all in his face.

“Ooookay,” Henry muttered, hurrying over to wrap both arms around his fiancé, and realized that she was shaking as tiny giggles escaped her. “Mabel? Honey? Sugarbear? Come on, snap out of it.”

“ _Sugarbear_?”

Henry shot a glare at the strange Dipper, who cleared his throat and awkwardly fiddled with the leather bracelets strapped around one wrist. Satisfied that he wasn’t going to cause any more trouble, Henry turned back to Mabel, muttering whatever soothing things he could think of into her ear as he rubbed her back, until the giggles turned to soft sobs and the sobs trailed away into the occasional sniffle. When she reached over and wrapped both arms around his waist, Henry breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

“What -” the strange Dipper started to ask, but before he could finish his sentence, Dipper – _their_ Dipper, Alcor, the Dipper Henry knew and ever so slightly feared – popped into being just above the counter, his back turned to the newcomer, leaping down as soon as he appeared to put himself face-to-face with Mabel.

“Are you okay? I felt you get upset and I came as fast as I could, what happened?”

It wasn’t Mabel who answered him. Instead, a sharp intake of breath from the strange Dipper made Dip- _Alcor_ , Henry was just going to think of him by his title for now, it was much less confusing – turn, snarling, sharp teeth bared, arms flickering with blue flame, ready to confront whatever terrible thing had hurt his twin sister.

The strange Dipper threw up both hands defensively when the demon whirled to face him, and Henry saw the exact moment that recognition struck them both, two pairs of eyes, one black and gold, the other white and brown, widening in identical expressions of shock.

“Dipper,” Mabel said, clearly and brightly, with just a hint of a hysterical giggle worming its way into her words, “meet Dipper.”

Save for the faint crackle of spectral flames, there was absolute silence in the Stanley Pines Memorial Library for the space of a few heartbeats. And then, without drama, the strange Dipper fell over backwards into a dead faint.

…

Dipper woke up to find himself staring directly into menacing gold-on-black eyes.

The demon ( _demon! With_ his _face! Oh god, it_ was _him, this was_ worse _than being dead in this timeline!_ ) snapped its fingers the instant Dipper started screaming, and Dipper’s mouth zipped itself shut. He reached up, fumbling to try to unzip it, and when that failed, tried to push the demon from its perch in midair above his chest. The demon only bobbed slightly, giving him an annoyed look.

“I think we need to talk,” it said, and Dipper shook his head furiously. “Oh, come on, you think this is easy for me either? Just calm down.”

Dipper hoped the glare of outraged disbelief that he leveled at the demon would get his message across loud and clear. It seemed like it did, because the demon reached up and rubbed the back of its neck awkwardly before it said anything else.

“And, uh, sorry about your mouth. I’ll undo it before I put you back, promise.”

For the first time, Dipper looked around him, not just at the demon, and saw that the colour seemed to have leached out of the world, leaving everything the familiar, unwelcome grey shades of the mindscape.

The demon actually _winced_ when Dipper turned back to face it.

“Yeah, that’s not going to make you trust me more, is it. Sorry about this, but I had to talk to you in private and this was the only way. Seriously, Mabel complains about _me_ poking my nose into everybody’s business, but _you_ try keeping secrets with _her_ around.” It suddenly looked guilty. “Not that I’m keeping secrets from her. Just…she doesn’t always need to know _all_ the gory details. You know?”

Dipper shook his head, but a parade of memories of everything from giving up his shot with Wendy to go back and get Waddles, to plastering on a smile, pretending that Bill’s torture hadn’t been _that_ bad, maybe he just needed some sleep and he’d be fine in the morning, tied a little knot of guilt in his stomach.

“Wait, what am I asking? Of course you know, you’re me.” The demon smacked itself in the forehead with one gloved hand, letting out a long sigh. “Ugh. Look at me, the all-knowing, all-powerful Alcor, can’t even have a civilized conversation without screwing it all up.”

Dipper reached up, discovered that the zipper sealing his mouth that had frustrated him before was suddenly, surprisingly, simple to unzip. “Alcor?” he asked, pulling himself up to sit on the couch he’d been lying on, and the demon – well, ‘jumped’ was probably the best word for it, but given that it was sitting cross-legged on thin air, it was more like a jerky bobbing up and down.

“What? Oh. Yeah. Turns out summoners don’t exactly take you seriously without some kind of demonic title. Who knew.” The demon glanced to its left, and lowered its voice before it added, “Although _and if you tell Mabel about this I will skin you_ I answer to Sir Dippingsauce for some of them, too.” It answered Dipper’s incredulous look with a shrug. “There was an incident with some math homework and a sweater.”

"This is so weird," Dipper concluded, and his demonic counterpart nodded.

"You should try living it."

"I…think I’ll pass."

The demon nodded again, the expression it wore clearly showing that it - _he_ \- had expected as much. “Yeah, I probably would’ve too if I’d had the choice.”

There was a moment of cautious silence, Dipper staring at the floor as he carefully lined up his thoughts. Finally, with a sideways glance up at the demon - _Alcor_ , he’d called himself - he asked, “If it’s not too rude…what happened?”

"That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about." Alcor shifted around, getting comfortable in a foot of air above the couch cushions, not meeting Dipper’s eyes. "You look about the same age as m- as Mabel. Did you have the Transcendence about ten years ago?"

"The what?"

"I’m gonna take that as a no."

"The only thing that happened ten years ago was - wait, are you talking about that…thing that Bill tried to do?" Dipper tried to stuff down a gasp as the realisation struck him, but he wasn’t quite fast enough. "You mean this is the timeline where we didn’t stop him? Somehow I thought it’d be a lot more apocalyptic."

"Oh no, we stopped him," Alcor said, in a breezy voice that seemed a little too calculated. Dipper frowned, raising an eyebrow, and the demon looked away, fidgeting with the star-shaped gold pin attached to his bow tie. "Um. But you destroyed him, right?"

"I think so? He hasn’t showed up trying to ruin our lives or anything since then, so we both figure that was the last of him." Dipper’s frown deepened when the demon still wouldn’t meet his eyes. "You’re saying you didn’t."

"Well, not _quite_.” At last, Alcor turned to face Dipper, giving him a smile that, despite his reluctance to associate himself with anything that remotely resembled a lamb, Dipper could only describe as _sheepish._ “He…kind of tried to possess me to save himself and I got fused with the leftovers.”

Dipper didn’t say anything - couldn’t, even though Alcor’s slowly fading smile seemed to be waiting for some sort of response. All he could do was stare, seeing the demon with new eyes. Now that the shock and sheer weirdness of seeing those awful eyes in his own face had faded somewhat, it was impossible not to see the sharp black suit and top hat (he even had the little _tie_ , how could he _stand_ it), all the little mannerisms that hadn’t seemed quite _right_ , how it all added up -

"I’m not him," Alcor said, quietly, and Dipper realised he’d been staring. "I’m not - I’m not _entirely_ myself, either, at least not like I was before, not like _you_ , but I’m _not him_.”

Dipper knew he’d latched onto entirely the wrong part of this declaration, but he couldn’t help but echo, “Not like _me_?”

For the first time since Dipper had met him, Alcor went completely still, not so much as floating higher or lower in the air, both eyes fixed on a spot on the floor several feet in front of the couch. Just as Dipper opened his mouth to apologise, though, the demon spoke.

"You went back home with Mabel at the end of the summer, didn’t you?"

"I - yeah, of course," Dipper admitted, wondering why it felt like confessing to a crime.

"And it was a little weird, for a while, going back to normal after a whole summer uncovering the secrets of Gravity Falls? Going back to school knowing that you’d saved the world, when no one else even knew it’d been in danger?"

Dipper didn’t answer, this time, and Alcor kept talking, quietly and absently doodling runes and arcane symbols, some of which Dipper recognised, some of which were completely foreign, some of which looked made up on the spot, picked out in lines of blue fire on the air in front of him. “And it was strange, to be the hero who got picked on and had to do homework and clean your room and eat your vegetables, but eventually you got used to it. But you knew there was something _more_ out there, your eyes had been opened, and you couldn’t leave it alone. You had to find all the answers. And there were still blank pages at the end of the journal. I know, I remember them.”

Alcor sketched a rough shape in the air, a six-fingered hand with the number ‘3’ in its palm. It hung there for a moment, casting an eerie blue glow on the grey of the mindscape around them, before disintegrating into nothing.

"You’ve…been thinking about this a lot," Dipper finally managed, and was surprised to hear his own voice shake. Alcor glanced over at him with a look that, for a moment, put Dipper in mind of a startled deer, almost like the demon had forgotten he was even there, before he broke into a wide, sharp-toothed grin that made Dipper flinch.

"I guess I have," Alcor mused. "Sorry," he added, not sounding very sorry at all.

"It’s cool," Dipper answered, quickly, holding up a hand.

"I was making a point, though," Alcor continued, like Dipper hadn’t said anything. "About when your life changes. You get used to it, but when you know what you’re missing, what you’ve lost, that wanting never really goes away. You just learn how to live with it, how to - hah, how to fill in the rest of the blank pages in the journal."

They were both quiet for a moment after that, each staring at a seperate patch of spectacularly uninteresting wood floor.

"And then, sometimes, you find or invent something that lets you step between timelines and find out how it all could have gone horribly wrong," Alcor sighed, breaking the silence. "And that’s kind of where the whole metaphor falls apart."

"I’m sorry," Dipper said. There didn’t seem to be anything else he could say.

"Don’t be. It’s not all bad - I mean, some of these powers are definitely a perk. Besides, somebody had to have a semi-normal life. I’m just happy it was me." The grin that Alcor shot in Dipper’s direction was surprisingly goofy, for all that it was full of sharklike teeth, and Dipper found himself returning it.

"Semi-normal? You really think _we_ could ever have a _semi-normal_ life? Uh uh. That timeline travel incantation is just the latest in a long, long string of weird. You wouldn’t believe some of the stories I could tell you.”

"Oh yeah? Try _being an actual demon_. You ever fought off an invasion of completely insane cultists while not actually being able to _touch_ any of them?”

"An invasion of insane cultists? Try an entire village of them, complete with freaky seasonal sacrifice rituals to a demonic entity that wants to bite your head off. Literally."

"Try _being_ that demonic entity. Seriously, I don’t eat virgins! I don’t have _any_ use for virgins! They just can’t seem to get it through their heads!”

"You know what this reminds me of?" Dipper asked, and didn’t wait for Alcor to answer, shouting it out in near-perfect unison with his demonic counterpart. "Tyrone!"

"Oh man, I haven’t thought about that guy in _age_ _s_ ,” Alcor sighed, tipping his head back to stare at the ceiling.

"I know, right? It’s too bad he turned out to be a jealous, power-hungry backstabber, we had some really good conversations." Dipper paused. "Although they did tend to start to go in circles after a while."

Alcor nodded, slowly spinning in midair until he hung upside down, his top hat floating perched perfectly on his dangling hair. “You’re going to wake up soon,” he said, casually. “Get ready for the biggest Mabel hug you’ll ever get.”

Dipper started to say something he was certain was very important, but the grey world was fading around him and the last thing he saw before everything went black was the golden gleam of Alcor’s eyes.

…

Dipper stepped back to his timeline full of food, his brain still aching from the interrogation that Mabel and Stan had put him through.

The first thing he did on his return was to grab his twin and wrap both arms around her, squeezing like she’d slip through his fingers if he let his grip slacken just the tiniest bit. Mabel huffed a breathless laugh into the shoulder of his hoodie, returning the hug with equal force even as she teased, “Aww, did the big monster hunter get scared going over there alone?”

"Terrified," Dipper answered, burying his face in the soft wool of her sweater, and shut his eyes.


End file.
